Young Irelander Rebellion

The Young Irelander Rebellion occurred on 29 July 1848 when members of the Young Ireland revolutionary society launched an abortive uprising against the United Kingdom amid the Great Famine. Two Irishmen were killed in the failed uprising, many of whose leaders were deported to Australia or fled into exile in the United States and France.

Background
The Young Ireland society was founded in 1842 by younger and more radical members of Daniel O'Connell's Irish nationalist Repeal Association, and, in 1847, the Young Irelanders broke off to found the avowedly violent and militant Irish Confederation. Its ranks grew amid the Great Famine, which exemplified British misrule in Ireland and encouraged the growth of the Irish republican cause. The Revolutions of 1848 also provided inspiration for an Irish uprising against the British occupation, led by William Smith O'Brien and Thomas Francis Meagher, who had travelled to revolutionary Paris following the French Revolution of 1848 and brought back with them an Irish tricolor inspired by the French one. On 22 July 1848, the British government announced that it would suspend habeas corpus, forcing the Young Irelanders into action.

Rebellion
From 23 to 28 July, O'Brien, Meagher, and John Blake Dillon raised the standard of revolt as they travelled from County Wexford to County Tipperary, and, on 29 July, the Young Irelanders erected barricades near the Ballingarry Commons colliery in South Tipperary to prevent O'Brien's arrest. A British police unit took up positions in a two-story farmhouse, where they were then besieged by the revolutionaries; the British took the farmhouse's occupants as hostages. A constable fired the first shot at O'Brien as he tried to negotiate, and James Stephens and Terence MacManus were wounded while dragging O'Brien to safety. The shooting carried on for hours before the rebels, running low on ammunition, fled in the face of British reinforcements. Two rebels were killed in the siege, and the rebellion's leaders were soon captured, sentenced to death, and ultimately deported to Australia after international condemnation and public outcry forced the British government to commute their sentences. Many of the deported leaders would ultimately escape their captivity and flee to the United States, where they went on to found the Fenian Brotherhood in 1858.